Moredcai goes from loud-yet-vaguely-professional, to a depressed Truxican slob.note I'm aware this is due to a change in voice actors.

He gets compared to a Truxican wrestler by Marcus in the first game's character selection screen, so it can be assumed that the Truxican element was always there.

Lilith goes from being vaguely flirty and somewhat boastful to a gigantic, boastful tsundere.

Brick is... Brick.

It's possible that, due to too much eridium exposure and/or Hyperion capture of the three, the Vault Hunters you see running around (except for Brick, who is Brick) are really Manchurian agents for the Hyperion cause that goes horribly wrong — Roland would have built up an anti-Hyperion resistance to root out and identify all anti-Hyperion rebels and would have died to leave the anti-Hyperion resistance leaderless, Mordecai would have fooled Bloodwing into turning into yet another Eridium experiment, and Lilith would have become a secondary backup for Angel, after leading the player to the core and getting themselves killed. Handsome Jack, however, wasn't counting on the new Vault Hunters being tough sons of bitches.

It could also be the other way around — the vault hunters in the first game were unwitting Hyperion goons who did Handsome Jack's work, via Angel's commands, and the people you see in the campaign are the real Vault Hunters.

Or, perhaps, they've just gone through character growth. Roland has grown into his role as a leader, becoming calmer and more responsible. Between games, Mordecai had a bad relationship with Moxxi, who was pretty much an emotional vampire to him and left him a shell of himself. Lilith has had a legend grow up around her, complete with more than one cargo cult in her honor. That can go to someone's head. Brick... is Brick.

The Vault-Hunters seen in the intro movie were in true Vault-Hunter mode already.

Notice how Axton used a magnetic turret? He would not be able to do that without some levels behind his belt. Also, you generally do not find loaders and the like until you are a few levels into the game.

The Vault Hunters were hired by Jack to kill him

The 4 Vault Hunters seem to be working together in the beginning, and it's unlikely they'd just all hit the same train at the same time. I bet Handsome Jack hired them with the express purpose of "Turning" on them, so they'd never expect that they were pawns in his plan. Any character that wasn't used died in the crash, explaining why not everyone makes it through the intro. Gaige was just on the train as a passenger, and Jack thinks her whole Deathtrap deal is good enough, so he decides to use her as well.

The heroes of this game will be the villains of the next

Gearbox has already done the "heroes of previous game as mentors of the next" thing, and one of the underlying themes here is how Pandora likes to destroy heroes. The Vault Hunters of this game are not as ethically and mentally sound as the previous group. It's also impossible to ignore the symbolism of the heroes all taking Handsome Jack's mask after his defeat. By the time Borderlands 3 rolls around, they will have turned over to their darker natures in various ways and the new batch of characters will have to defeat the now-evil heroes of Borderlands 2.

Salvador: Obvious here. He's now a bandit king like Brick, only far more vicious.

Axton: He took over the surviving Hyperion organization, and is running it like... well, like Axton would. A smirking, cheerful General Ripper.

Maya: We've seen how easily cargo cults spring up on Pandora. She's been used by a religious order before, but it's a whole 'nother ballgame when you're the one in charge. She's allowed a cult to form around her and is using them to seek out the secrets of the remaining Vaults and Eridium.

Gaige: Mass produced Deathtrap, programmed it to hunt down bullies in her territory. She is essentially a dictator ruling her territory, but people are really nice to each other in it. The irony of an anarchist doing this is lost on her.

Zer 0: The ultimate Big Bad. What is his goal? To open ALL the vaults. At once. Why?

This Troper would certainly love to see this happen, provided each character's downfall is realistic and gets plenty of exposition and quests (maybe discovering ECHO recordings and the like) and thus doesn't seem like an Ass Pull.

This was done in MechWarrior Vengeance and Black Knight, with the first games' protagonist becoming the Big Bad in the sequel. It would be an interesting fight to use new vs old game mechanics(Phasewalk vs Phaselock, etc).

And Krieg will regain his sanity and be the Token Good Teammate of the group, or leading the assault to take them down.

Vaults require Vault Hunters to open.

As a kind of prophecy, entities with certain traits must be present; whether one has an Eridium Charged Vault Key or not. This is why Jack assembled the second team. And had Angel assemble the first team. In a twisted way, he's right. He WAS the one who set into motion the opening of the first vault.

First Vault Hunters

Mordecai was initially unaware of his Bloodwing's real gender.

I think that explains why, in the first game, Bloodwing was a boy, and in the second, it has been retconned as a her.

How many pet owners have assumed their pets were male, and then out pop babies?

A lot of birds of prey lack visible gender differences.

Word of God has stated Bloodwing's species changes gender halfway through its life cycle.

The New-U stations. It's pretty clear he can't be normally revived by one of them, presumably due to Jack pulling some strings. But he's probably still in the system somewhere. What if, before she died, Angel updated his New-U data? Perhaps then, someone could be in a position to revive him!

Perhaps he's in hiding for self-protection. The Hyperion Corporation is still around, they might try to tie up loose ends.

New-Us are not canon, so that wouldn't work. He could always come back as a zombie, a raid boss (raid bosses are confirmed to be resurrected whenever someone challenges them again) or "Roland-Trap", though.

Or maybe the last station he passed was at the bottom of the peak, and he spent the rest of the game climbing back up.

Hence his reason for wanting her to stay behind when they attacked Angel's bunker.

Angel was the one who wanted Lilith to stay behind (to keep her out of Jack's grasp). It's also unclear how long since Roland and Lilith were together, but it's implied to be since around the fall of New Haven, which was a few years ago. So she would have noticed before now.

Axton

Axton treats his turret as his wife... because it IS his wife.

Axton's ex-wife Sarah, when all's said and done, was very loyal to Axton, and he was loyal back. She died before the events of the game, and considering what series this is, we can easily assume it wasn't natural causes. Axton somehow managed to rescue her brain intact (or intact enough that it could serve as the turret's CPU) and installed it in his turret, so he'd have his wife with him forever. When he calls her honey, sweetie, and all those cute names? That's ACTUAL affection. When he says "Have you met the missus?" It's because it IS his missus. This also would make sense as a stealth Shout-Out: dead wife turned into a tool for her still living husband? And her husband's a COMMANDO? Where have I seen this before?

Doesn't really make sense since Sarah was Axton's commanding officer when he was still in the army. She was the one who warned him he was going to be executed by firing squad and arranged for him to flee to Pandora.

Jossed. Sarah is still alive by the time of the game, as shown by the Sir Hammerlock DLC.

Gaige

The Mecromancer will be the focus of a Halloween themed DLC

It'll flesh out her backstory and explain how she came to create an "undead" robot. More specifically it'll have the same "logs" you can pick up for the main 4 vault hunters scattered around.

Jossed. Her 4 ECHO logs are up on Youtube, explaining EVERYTHING. The "undead" robot look- it was more convenient to just let him float since she didn't have enough time to build the legs, and in hindsight it made DT far more maneuverable anyway.

Jossed even further. The Halloween DLC was about TK Baha sending the Vault Hunters to go fight some Halloween-themed boss.

Gaige doesn't canonically appear until the Scarlett DLC.

This would explain why she wasn't with the other hunters in the opening credits. In the same way you can have any four vault hunters running around the game (including duplicates), the Mechromancer can appear in the main quest before arriving on Pandora despite it not being canon. After all, a schoolgirl going on the run and joining/doing battle with a female pirate Captain sounds pretty Treasure Island-ish (to the point of being a rough Recycled In SpaceGender Flip of the plot). Plus Gaige and Scarlett are both standing together on the launch menu which appeared after the Scarlett DLC went live.

If this was true, then Gaige's ECHO logs would have been put in the DLC and not up on Youtube. You would think that her wanted poster would have been put into the game as well, even in the Torgue DLC... but it's not. You have to look it up on the internet to see it.

Gaige's attraction to Hammerlock is more because of his implants than anything else.

Gaige has a 'thing' for machines, and people who are part machine get her interest more than regular people.

Gaige's ECHO Cast wasn't actually unpopular.

She was actually a very popular ECHO Caster, but Marcie paid every fan of her to unsubscribe. Her subscribers skyrocketed to 20,000 when Marcie exploded because she was a puddle and therefore unable to pay them to stay unsubscribed.

Maya

Maya isn't affected by Eridium... yet.

Lilith was still on Pandora when the Eridium sprang up due to the vault's opening, and had 5 years of exposure to find out that she is affected by it. Angel has been having the stuff forcibly pumped into her for most of her life, giving her more than enough time for it to affect her. Maya only just now arrived on Pandora, and simply hasn't been exposed enough yet.

Krieg

Our new Vault Hunter is an escaped Slag experiment subject.

At South By South-West 2013, Gearbox unveiled a teaser trailer to a muscular, chaotic, and extremely ANGRY new Vault Hunter, ripping bandits apart with his bare hands. No clear shots were shown of him (hence why it's a teaser trailer), but it ended with "TEST SUBJECTS WANTED" followed by a link to Gearbox Software's website, advertising that they really are looking for new employees and game developers. I propose that our new Vault Hunter escaped from the Slag Experimentation labs, managed to maintain his sanity and intelligence, but is now mutated in the same way as the Brutes and the Rats, and he wants to rip Hyperion a new asshole.

Also, take this line from one of his quotes "...blood and noise forever piercing my skull poisoning me with its psychopathic purple liquid..." now what does that sound like to you?

Pretty much confirmed, since the last DLC basically stated that Dr Samuel knows about him and his condition. Considering her one other appearance, this basically confirms that Krieg was one of the Slag Experiments, and might have even been held at the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve.

Krieg was an Experiment because...

He was the only Bandit to object selling Tiny Tina's parents to Hyperion for Slag Testing. The other bandits probably just decided it would be easier to get cash for four test subjects rather than waste the ammo to kill Kreig.

Krieg is Tiny Tina's father.

This is false, Word of God says that Tina's parents are officially dead, according to the Inside the Box - "Fart Jokes and Tragedy".

We know he was a Hyperion test subject, just like Tiny Tina's father. He can gain the ability to turn into a Badass Psycho Mutant, which ties into the recording of Handsome Jack saying 'we're just gonna mutate the hell out of them' which is found in the same lab as the recording of her father being tested on. Further, the voice in his head can, when idle, be heard pondering about someone important to him, wondering where she is, if she's alive, if she got away, but it never says who 'she' is. Going along with Tiny Tina, Krieg also has an 'explosive' theme going with several of his skills, including increasing all explosive damage, dropping a grenade when he dies, throwing exploding buzz-axes, making enemies explode when killed, and replacing 'Fight for your Life' with a mode where he runs around hurling bombs at everybody.

"Where is she? Is she still alive? Did she get away?"

The short video reveals that "she" is most likely Maya, who Krieg fell in love with and became a Vault Hunter to help protect.

This isn't quite certain; whoever "she" is, he's speaking of her in the past tense and asking if she got away. He already knows exactly where Maya is; fighting right beside him (his inner voice can sense everything he's doing despite his limited influence, so it's unlikely that he's unaware of this).

It's also worth noting that there are recordings of a family, two parents and their child (called 'Tina'), in a Hyperion base. The child escapes via a smuggled grenade, the mother is killed, but the father is never accounted for. Said recordings are found in a slag mutation research facility. Connect the dots.

All but explicitly confirmed in the Wedding Day Massacre DLC - when Moxxi asks Krieg if he ever had a missus Vault Hunter in his life, he simply rants about "THE TINY ONE AND THE SAD-FACED MOTHER AND THE BLUE TATTOO." While 'the blue tattoo' is a pretty clear reference to Maya, there are precious few other people whom "the tiny one and the sad-faced mother" could be referring to.

And Then there's the optional mission of the Crawmerax DLC where Doctor Samuels (Sammy) is Krieg's ally, implying that his slag testing was done at the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve.

Since he refers to (presumably) the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve as "THE BIRTHING PLACE", it's possible that "THE SAD-FACED MOTHER" is Dr. Samuels, the reluctant "mother" of the surviving Slag mutants.

Krieg is Gaige the Mecromancer's father.

This is also false, a DLC named "Sir Hammerlock vs the Son of Crawmerax" officially states that Gaige's father is, in fact, alive and has managed to destroy a transport filled with mercenaries before they can even get to Gaige.

Similar reasoning to the above (he created a distraction for Gaige's escape using explosives, so he must have had some knowledge of them). Maybe, after the entire mess died down, he decided to go to Pandora (or fled, to avoid prosecution for helping Gaige escape). Handsome Jack blew him up like most of the other vault hunters, but he survived and Jack (not wanting another VH rushing around, outside of his control unlike the original 4/5) decided to send him off to be experimented on.

This one doesn't really fit in with the timeline. It's implied Krieg was previously a Vault Hunter, which meant he would have had to be on Pandora for quite some time. Also, the slag experimentation on him should have happened over a long period of time to shatter his sanity into the state it is now. Plus, from Gaige's ECHO logs, Handsome Jack was already trying to take over Pandora, and she presumably arrived at the same time as the other Vault Hunters.

Seemingly Jossed by the Son of Crawmerax DLC, where Gaige's dad is evidently a different character.

One of Krieg's insane rants is prophetic.

One of Krieg's rants while slaughtering his foes is as follows: "the prince of justice and genocide has something to say: Gone are the days of the tentacle and the age of the gods' mercy is far away...We are the fighters of the middle, the second act in the three-part MEAT play, AND I WILL WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR!" He's right about being in the "second act" (Borderlands 2), and the "days of the tentacle" are as clear a reference to the Destroyer as any. So perhaps Borderlands 3 will take place in and/or bring about "the age of the gods' mercy." What that actually means is another riddle altogether.

A reference to the Eridians?

It should probably be noted that the primary antagonists of Borderlands and Borderlands 2 are Atlas and Hyperion respectively. In Greek Mythology, Atlas and Hyperion were both Titans, who were overthrown by the Gods of Olympus...

Krieg helped Tina escape

Tina will always react calm and normal when you meet her as Krieg, despite looking and sounding like a psycho who she hates because of their relation to her parents' death. This could either be because of the above mentioned theory that he was her father and she somehow feels it, or perhaps he simply was another test subject in the Lab and helped her escape. We know she managed to escape because of a grenade, but if you look at what Hyperion normally throws at you in the game, it sounds rather strange for a little girl to escape just with one grenade. That is, unless it was used to blow a hole in Krieg's cell, with him released and butchering the engineers, robots, or even soldiers, which would have been enough distraction for her to escape. So in Tina's mind Krieg was written down as "friendly psycho".

Krieg's admirer

There's little to know about our beloved meaty Psychopath who has unlimited rage and abdominal muscles, but his erratic quotes and the DLC against the Son of Crawmerax does unveil one of his secrets, possibly. Knowingly, this woman Krieg normally states is not a child like Tina, but a scietist who could actually be in love with Krieg before the experimentation upon him commences. Applying that "Purple fluid" into Krieg, in his words, he saw the woman cry before becoming the monster who now know today. It's even mentioned that her name is "Sammy".

Or, more likely, the person in question who dealt with Krieg's assassin was Dr Samuels from the Wildlife Preserve (who was forced to experiment on people by Jack, who was holding her wife hostage) and her helping out is a result of her extreme guilt for being involved in the experiments.

Krieg's abilities before his mutations were. . .

Similar to a Madness Combat protagonist. Creg(how about for now we call his sane personality that to avoid confusion) was a Bounty Hunter, which implies good close quarter combat and marksman skills. He was Brutal and effective. A Fear Monger on the battlefield, a man that people spoke of. A notorious Bounty Hunter that gets the job done, and does it thoroughly. And his last job was for Hyperion. . . maybe? And now I want a Madness Combat Borderlands Krieg short.

Krieg's personalities throughout the game establish a good partnership

In the "Meat Bicycle for Two" character short Krieg's dominant Psycho side(in further text Krieg) and his sane inner voice(in further text Creg) are show to be like someone with a faulty reception, and then they met Maya, who gave Both sides hope for some day being sane(ish) again. And if Borderlands 2 was kind of like Borderlands the Presequel in the character interaction not being limited to just battle and idle chattiness, Krieg would have a lot to talk to Creg and to the coop partners and to everyone really, and especially Handsome Jack, as well as Buzz axe-ing Jackie boy or performing a "fatality", if you know what I mean. Bottom line Krieg would have a lot to say, Crieg as well, but not so much.

Possibilities

Possible classes in a DLC or the third game.

There's definitely going to be a third game, making a trilogy. This WMG will be all possible theories for what the four classes will be in the third game and how will they play.

The Stringman playing Bass: Based on a combination of Buddy from Six String Samurai, Rocketbilly Redcadillac from Gungrave Overdose, and drawing on other inspirations, we have a retro-50s style rocker with sunglasses, James Dean jacket, a truly ridiculous hairstyle on his default head, and a tendency to make bad musical puns and impersonate Elvis. His default melee attack is a katana, and his class mod is his guitar. His action skill causes him to stun enemies with a power chord or create elemental effects in the area around him.

The Siren: There will be a Siren just like in the two previous games, but her powers will fill in the Berzerker niche, thus her powers will be called "Phasezerker" and she would an Amazonian BeautyStatuesque Stunner. The Phasezerking will cover her in an aura of energy that will allow her to fire blasts of energy in lieu of her guns that ignore shields and leave her invunerable at the same time, allowing her get close and melee with punishing physical moves. Her skills trees involve concentrating on the melee and projectile aspect of her phazezerking each and on her physical attributes which concentrate on tanking.

The Necromancer: A mysterious being who looks like a walking mass of old technology and rotted flesh covered in a black billowing robe, his special ability is the deployment of a some kind of stationary monster with lots of teeth and the gun turret on its head. Not only will it shoot down enemies but also pick up the dead bodies using multiple long sticky tongues and eat the bodies, regurgitating a special "juice" item only the Necromancer can use while giving off an aura that inflicts severe debuffs to enemies that walk through it. Once consumed, the "juice" gives the Necromancer various random status buffs such as increased speed, faster reload, health regeneration, etc. The skills trees involve the performance of the turret, such as firing speed, how many corpses it can eat before getting "full" and its reach; the stat buffs received from the "juice" and the debuffs the monster's aura give off; and the debuffs the Necromancer himself inflicts from guns and melee attacks, including leeching off enemy health.

The Rogue: A former secret agent who's a combination of Triple X and Sean Connery's version of James Bond, his special ability is a grappling hook type device that he can use to latch onto enemies to reel them in for closer kills or even steal their loot right off of them. The skill tree for the ability allows the grappling hook to inflict more damage, add elemental damage, and higher chance of stealing loot, and the second involve increasing the Rogue's proficiency in various gun types, and the third involve increasing his regular stats as well as increasing money drops and the probability of gaining rare items from fallen enemies and chests.

The Slacker: A completely random 20-something slacker whose unimportance in greater events caused him to be chosen as the guinea pig to try out various experimental technologies, thinking him as some expendable resources but somehow lucky enough to be able to master them with great easewith little to no initial training. One skill tree is an Elemental Adapter, which increases the chances of Elemental damage in elemental guns while adding chance of elemental damage in guns that don't have any (adds fire damage to a gun, even if its a Jakobs). The second tree is a Healing Pak, which increases the effectiveness of shields, increases Health Drops from enemies, increases effectiveness of Healing Items in general, minor health regen, faster rivival of teammates, massive increase in attack stat when fallen to achieve Second Wind quicker, and allows healing teammates via shooting them. The last skill tree is the Slacker's special ability, the Temporal Disruptor: Once activated, it speeds him up to the point where time has literally stopped from his perspective, allowing him to freely attack enemies, run away, heal allies, etc.

Dr. Slag as Himself: A scientist who was studying Sirens and hoped to one day replicate their powers in other people. Experimentation with slag injections on himself resulted in him mutating into a Humanoid Abomination, with glowing purple veins and eyes and the ability to control the elements. His power, Slag On!, lets him shoot lightning blasts with his right hand, acid bombs with his left, and melee releases a fire nova to barbeque enemies who get too close. His skill trees would revolve around increasing effectiveness with elemental weapons, increasing the power of Slag On!, and no selling elemental damage, with a chance to slag random enemies. His motivation to coming to Pandora (assuming the next one takes place there) is he heard that three of the six Sirens had congregated there, and he jumped at the chance to continue his life's work.

The Bionic Woman: A young lady in a suit of ass-kicking armor, she acquired numerous bionic implants, turning her into walking, talking engine of destruction. Her action skill, Overclock, lets her run super fast, jump super high with the aid of a jet pack, overcharge her shields and fire guns much, much faster. Her skill trees would revolve around tanking, increasing effectiveness of weaponry, and making her more agile. Skills could include teleporting ammo from her reserve into her guns without reloading, a dash power, or making her suit randomly fire a missile at who ever shoots at her. Her motivation for coming to Pandora is to field test her new armor and implants in the most dangerous environment she can think of.

The Scout: A interplanetary Ranger type guy, armed with a drone that he can toss out to distract enemies and pummel them with bullets and lasers, letting The Scout shoot them with sniper rifles and shotguns. Skill trees would revolve around making the drone faster or more durable, increasing damage with weapons, or healing allies.

The Replicator: A former Hyperion soldier who uses a hacked digistruct module to create a clone of himself. Said clone is armed with whatever weapon he is currently holding and runs around with its own A.I. to draw fire and shoot bad guys. His skill trees would revolve around making the clone last longer or move faster, making the Replicator harder to find, or making assault rifles and pistols more accurate and damaging.

The Beastmaster: A hunter/trapper who seeks out the most dangerous creatures in the universe, and tames or kills them. His action command acts like the Mechromancer's, summoning his pet. If the next game takes place off Pandora, he'll have a skag as a way of justifiying keeping them in the game. Skill trees could be: One that focuses on improving his pet. Giving it more health, elemental effects, the ability to burrow and sneak up enemies, even the ability to revive charecters in Fight for Your Life mode. A trapper tree, where he gets access to causing daze effects, and grenades go from fuses to proximity or remote detonators. Finally a huntsman tree that focuses on improving his killing ability with guns, particurly sniper rifles and shotguns.

The Engineer: Much like Roland was a former member of the Crimson Lance, so too could there be a former Hyperion Engineer who would slip from Handsome Jack's grip before seeking the potential riches of a Vault. He still has the automated limbs much like a Hyperion Engineer would, but there would be features to distinguish him from the mooks. His special ability could be a powerful burst cannon shot that can be improved upon by use of skill points. The other two skill trees can relate to weapon efficiency and shields. However, the way he is, he'll be more vulnerable to acid compared to other classes.

The Nomad: A former bandit who, still sane enough to realize he probably wouldn't gain much working with other bandits, decided to go off in search of the bounty of new Vaults located throughout the universe. His action skill could allow him to intimidate all or at least some non-Badass or Loot Midget enemies to attack a certain enemy. His skill trees would focus on improving his abilities with guns in general, but specifically assault rifles and rocket launchers, buffing his minions and himself, and increasing his melee capabilities and ability to tank damage.

The Hacker: An employee of S&S Munitions, assuming they make a comeback in the next game, he/she is sent out to find weapon technology to help rebuild the S&S Munitions company. Will run around spouting some 1337-speak but also have a really intelligent side of their personality, talking about quantum mechanics and astronomy. The action skill would be "Digistruct Reload" that, when used, makes the next weapon reload use special digistructed S&S ammo that improve the weapon in different ways depending on the weapons stats, manufacturer and elemental type. The skill trees could be one to further improve the digistructed ammo and weapons in general. The second improves the other equipment, shields, grenade mods and such. Finally, the third is general boosts, like getting boosts after resurrecting from a New-U station and buffing friendly mechanical things (turrets and bots) while near, and debuffing enemy bots and weapons.

Tiny Tina as The Demolitionist: Assuming another time-skip of a few years between Borderlands 2 and 3, Tiny Tina will have grown up enough to actually become a Vault Hunter herself, like Roland. Given her penchant for explosions, her Action Skill would be to deploy one of those massive bombs that litter the area outside her hideout and would favour explosive weapons and grenades; anything that makes a big boom. Her skill trees could be divided into improving her bomb-deploying Action Skill (like modifiying the type of explosion to deal elemental damage, or increasing the spread of the explosion), and another could increase her efficiency with explosive weapons and grenades, and her third skill tree could focus on support/healing just like Roland and is her way of honouring his memory.

A Medzerker named Dr. J. Hiding. Originally a researcher for the Anshin corporation, he was experimenting with more efficient ways to administer healing items to potential customers. Unfortunately for him, the only thing he had to run tests on was himself. Doubly unfortunate, some jag-off thought it'd be a great idea to store Slag in the same place as the healing stuff. Even more unfortunately, he happened to be experimenting with Slag-tainted heal juice. The result was a twelve-foot hulking pile of angry that drains the blood out of anything within arm's reach. His skill trees would be about increasing the healing effects he grants to his team, doing less damage in keeping with the Hippocratic oath, and draining more health from enemies with each hit while 'Medzerking' before killing them.

A Bombzerker: The first "Zerker" focused on melee attacks, the second on guns, the third should focus on the third way of making things not live. BOMBS! LOTSA BOMB! A tree that focuses on never running out of grenades, getting one every time you kill someone, increasing how many grenades you pick up per grenade pickup, and increasing grenade regeneration during bombzerking, as well as upgrades like making all grenades home in, throw up to 3 in a bundle while bombzerking and overall Grenade Spam, adding elements to the grenade, and being an unkillable bastard. Bombzerk will let him regenerate grenades, throw them faster, and double explosive radius. He's a bit of a Magikarp with low grenade count at first, but can flat out level entire boss fights with unending grenade spam. His backstory doesn't exist, there's no reason for him to be a grenade-chucking lunatic, he's just born pyromaniacal.

"'The Goliath'". Pretty obvious, you play as a Goliath. Wears a vision obstructing helmet that restricts your HUD, and your action skill is to remove the helmet. With the helmet removed you can only use your fists, and killing enemies increases the amount of time you can spend making face gravy. Killing enemies also allows you to level up into stronger forms, like the regular Goliath enemies. Your skill trees are How R U, Welcome 2 Die, and Why So Much Hurt?! How R U focuses on improving your abilities while rampaging, such as gaining more experience and being able to spend more time rampaging. It's top tier skill is Unlucky Shot, which causes enemy scored head shots on you to knock off your helmet, instantly sending you rampaging even if the skill hasn't cooled off. Welcome 2 Die focuses on More Gun More Shooty Bang Bang More Pain! It includes thing such as Mor Gun Food!, which decreases movement speed while firing but increases magazine capacity. Why So Much Hurt?! skills focuse on keeping you alive, such as Make Face-Gravy, which give you health for headshots or other critical hits, or Shooty Make Power, which increases shield recharge while firing. And all of your skills are in Hulk speak. Your melee weapon is a sledge hammer, and your class mod is your belt buckle.

Handsome Jack, in one of his notes to a group of assassins, said that only six Sirens can exist in the universe at a time, and that he knows three personally. Counting Lilith and Maya, it's entirely possible that the third one he knows or one of his three unknowns could show up.

Who knows, maybe the Mechromancer is a Siren and her power is technoempathy.

You mean 3, the only 3 confirmed Sirens are Lilith, Maya, and Angel. Steele was a regular human and Gaige seems to be a regular human as well.

There is no reason to believe Commandant Steele isn't a Siren, by the way. What with her tattoos, Lilith's backstory (she came to Pandora hunting down another Siren), and the fact that she has Siren powers.

Adding to the above, when Jack says he knows three, he of course means Lilith, Maya, and Angel, but this recording was made after Steele's death, so even if she was a Siren and he knew it, he wouldn't say "I know four" in this instance anyway. The original WMG gets the three he knows wrong, but Jack's line is not evidence against Steele being a Siren.

But if Steele was a Siren why didn't she use her powers? We never see her use any powers when in the main story or in the Robolution DLC.

tbf she had already died once, and was probably no longer a Siren when she came back.

As all Sirens have different types of powers, its possible Steele had a power that just wasn't useful in direct combat situations.

It could be simply chalked up to Jack just not knowing Steele was actually a Siren. He only knew three personally, one of them his daughter Angel.

I thought the 6 sirens were Lilith, Angel, and the possibility of up to 4 player controlled sirens. Pretty sure that was why they made it 6.

Definitely not. That's a definite case of Gameplay and Story Segregation; you can play as four Sirens or four Commandos or whatever you want, but in canon there's one of each class. Besides, in the first game they also said there were only 6 Sirens, back when Lilith was a PC.

The Borderlands: Origins comic mentions Steele being a Siren. Whether it's canon is another story.

Almost all of Pandora's wildlife and inhabitants are affected by edirium slag in some way, from skags to stalkers to rakks to the bandits. Badasses are super infused with slag. "Experience" that the player gains is actually accumulated slag buildup. The distilled slag from animal bites, stings and bullets being crapped out by the bandits or carried through their mutation exposure is far more potent in the Vault Hunters' bodies. The more slagged (tough) a monster or bandit is, the more experience (slag infusion) you gain. You are a Badass, just like all the others... only better.

A future game will have a team of Vault Hunters from previous games.

As part of a larger concentrated effort to find more Vaults. My suggestions for representing Borderlands 1 would be Mordecai and Brick, since Lilith has transitioned to more of a Big Good role and Roland is dead, with these two being her two best men. Borderlands 2 would be represented by Maya and Axton filling in for the absences of the aforesaid Lilith and Roland, due to their similar roles. Even the Pre-Sequel could get in on it with Athena and Claptrap representing that game since Wilhelm and Nisha both died during Borderlands 2, Timothy is apparently MIA and Aurelia pulled a Screw This, I'm Outta Here!. The absence of the other Vault Hunters could be explained by them on a different mission (or missions) elsewhere and this is just the team we're focusing (or would be released as DLC). I just think it'd be fun to have a party of Vault Hunters from all the previous games being on a team.

A robot built BY the Eridians (either a good factionfrom the otherwise evil ones, or the REAL Eridians compared to the force pretending to be them), and was sent to stop Jack (or, more generally, prevent The Warrior from falling into potentially genocidal hands). This is obvious by the fact that, whenever he "accepts the challenge", he cryptically states: "This is intriguing/The Vault, my masterpiece?/Challenge accepted.

This troper believes Zer 0 is a robot, not because he has three fingers and a thumb, not because there's a number in his name like so many other fictitious robots from sci-fi franchises, not because he speaks in haiku (a form of poetry whose symmetry a robot would no doubt find gratifying), but simply because, unlike his fellow Vault Hunters, he doesn't pant or wheeze after sprinting for long distances in-game.

Evidence? Three fingers and a thumb on each hand. If he takes off his helmet, he'll say, "Well, obviously./What did you expect I was,/secretly female?"

Well, today I thought he was a quarian from Mass Effect; three fingers and non-bent legs? Human hybrid, maybe. As far as lore is concerned, Pandora is not Earth and the game's setting is close to that of ME (I think). Note that I didn't finish Borderlands 2 yet so don't hold it against me if anything turns out wrong.

Or some sort of Eridian construct. Unlikely, I know, but his seeming lack of understanding regarding any human social graces and his unnatural features (3 fingers per hand) at the very least make it unlikely that he'd be a human.

This troper believes that Zer 0 is an incomplete human/Eridian hybrid. He has a fully human body, salvaged from the dead body of an unlucky astronaut, but with Eridian implants to make him an Badass killing machine. However, the aliens couldn't find some of his fingers, so that is why that he doesn't have a full set of fingers. He was indoctrined and trained by Eridian soldiers, hence his lack of understanding about human social graces. Finally, Zer 0 was sent to Earth to protect the new Vault Hunters, and he wears a helmet to conceal his identity, both for stealth reasons and to prevent Hyperion from discovering the (rather visible) Eridian implants and torturing him or experimenting on him.

There's nothing to suggest that he's got any direct connection to them himself (maybe Hyperion just manufacture sneaking suits), but his display is quite similar to the various loaders' displays. It could be a prototype or variation of the exo combat engineers wear. It would also explain his fingers; Hyperion robots have differing hand designs (I recall some concept art shows them with a thumb, finger and "pad").

Zer 0 is a robot that was made by two people, Brick and Mordecai. Since Zer 0 has attributes from the two of them, (Sniping, Melee) it makes sense. Brick and Mordecai were in love, but since they couldn't produce a child together, they made a robot.

After his death, Lelouch was reborn inside the Borderlands universe, having gained heavily increased athletic ability at the cost of his two pinkies. He then once again adopted the name "Zero", only this time he made his persona a space ninja instead of a charismatic knight of justice for some reason.

Handsome Jack

Handsome Jack is...

Captain Jack Harkness. Space-roaming immortals have to get their kicks somehow. He certainly has the good looks and ego, if not the drive or selfishness.

This is an alternate universe where he ended up traveling with the Master instead of the Doctor, and his vicious and power-mad personality is a direct result of this.

Apparently, Handsome Jack was based on Captain Jack.

Actually an Eridian Half-Human Hybrid who took over Pandora for a foothold for the Eridians to gain power in the galaxy and take over the world. Oh, and there's definitely more. (Trollface) See, it occurs to me: Why does anyone want Pandora? My friend postulated that people want it because it's a free license to be as sociopathic as you want, though I'm not sure I believe that — Pandora would probably have way more offworlders with better toys if that was true. And the 'why control Pandora?' question goes double now that Roland, Mordecai, Lilith, and Brick opened the vault. See, Vault Hunting and the support of Vault Hunting seems to be a prosperous industry on Pandora, with Zed giving an air that 'oh, I've done this dozens of times' and mentioning giving the 'vault is a myth you'll get yourself killed lecture' very early. You even hear audio diaries from a Vault Hunter or three, and the fact that people refer to them as 'Vault hunters' implies that this is happens more often than not. Now that it's public knowledge that our favorite sociopathic Kleptomaniac Heroes opened it, why come? What value does it hold? Who's gonna buy your guns? So, in short, Pandora is useless. Then I thought about how Mr. Blake is made to resemble the Uncanny Valley appearance of the G-Man (Okay, maybe not, but you can't deny the G-Man inspired him.) the WMG below that Hyperion is run by Eridians, their incredibly advanced tech that they do deceptively little with, and the question of how, if Atlas made its fortune on elemental tech and (allegedly) being the best, Hyperion actually has the best tech. So I came up with an even more fanwanky explanation than my previous idea of Pandora being a giant firearm testing site-Handsome Jack is an Eridian-human hybrid who took over Pandora for a foothold for the Eridians to gain power in the galaxy and take over the universe, and the Eridians will be the Big Bad of the rest of the series. Besides, if the Eridians being Abusive Precursors does not make sense to you, remember: this is Borderlands, people.

Handsome Jack is actually very ugly.

When reviewing trailers and official art, it becomes quite obvious that Handsome Jack is wearing a mask. You can tell because the skin on his face is smoother and lighter in color and his two metal clips on his forehead and one on his chin. So, he probably calls himself "Handsome" and takes credit for all of the achievements of the Vault Haunters as compensation for his hideousness.

The mask actually serves to hide a marking in the form of the Vault symbol.

Handsome Jack is still alive

But it has nothing to do with New-U stations since they are confirmed non canon. Instead he never died in the first place because he didn't go to the vault, instead he sent his body double to take care of that business. [[Spoiler: at the end of the presequel he sees more or less what happened there]], and he either watched from afar or hidden behind a 1 way mirror to ensure that this is the start of his end game plan, the power of the Vault Network to wipe out the entire bandit population of the universe.

Tales Of The Borderlands reveals that Jack is still alive, but in the form of a murderous hologram that controls and aids Rhys. However, the final episode has Rhys ripping Jack out of his implants and either crushing the ECHO eye Jack resides in, or keeping it.

Handsome Jack is xenophobic

And I mean literally afraid of aliens, not just racist. Well, he's probably that too, but mostly about being afraid of aliens. When picking up Zer 0's ECHO logs in Sawtooth Cauldron, Jack stutters when Angel mentions he might not be human. It's the only time he falters for the entire game, and since he owns a company of robots I doubt that's what spooks him. Alternatively, Jack has a fear of robots uprising and killing him. Or maybe just a fear of irony.

Come the Pre-Sequel, this may have some credence - the alien that appears near the start of the game really unsettles him and he tells Athena to keep an eye out for it in the cutscene where he gets his scar.

Um, confirmed, if Pandorans count as aliens. There's a very definite White Man'sBurden aspect to the character, obsessed with deleting all of Pandoran culture to "civilize" them, and he considers pretty much all people from Pandora to be bandits.

Jack used to be an alright family man.

But the combined stress of working as a lowly code monkey in an arms company where his ideas were laughed off, having a siren as a daughter, and said siren daughter accidentally killing his wife (and disfiguring him hence the mask) drove him off the slippery slope to being the monster that he is in-game. Alternatively he's always been a monster and his wife had a massive case of Genre Blindness.

Jack is processing Eridium the hard way. The planet itself processes Eridium by its ecosystem.

The refined eridium you get when you kill critters isn't the refined stuff Jack made; it's a byproduct of the animals themselves. Just like how they can organize bullets and weapons in their gullets; skags eat eridium chuncks; they probably die; then other Pandora wildlife eat those bodies; and eventually Eridium is produced.

This is, in fact, intentional, and why the Eridians created such adaptive species on the planet. They're a biological processing system.

Well if the next DLC indicates anything, Jack has had a crop of cultists worshiping him post-death: is it TRULY just an insane band of bandits/ex-Hyperion employees, or are they being commanded to worship him by the Eridians/Eridian Imposters?

Jack was a bandit himself, or at least raised by bandits

Life must've been hell for him through this sort of upbringing, to an extent that he considers everyone who doesn't support him to be bandits when he took the reins of Hyperion. His "grandma issues" which drive him to hire other bandits to kill her could be one indication that such was his life, and on her (now bloodstained) bed was a "disciplinary" circular saw, not much unlike one that Psychos use. Also, when you look at the face behind his mask, he has the vault symbol on it. Since Psychos wear these on their masks...

Jack used the New-U to survive.

No one has ever seen his real face, in mint condition, on the whole planet. You took his mask, but when he came back he just looked like any other D-Bag, and moved out. Heck, if he's smart (he is) he probably set up a contingency plan with a group of bandits and a large cache of weapons, buzzards, and money for the mysterious "Son of Handsome Jack" to claim.

Jossed, as New-U stations aren't canon.

Jack will be back in the final DLC

Nakayama tried to bring him back via cloning, who's to say some other loyal follower won't try it again? Maybe in a DLC where we got to the Hyperion Moon base.

In hindsight... no, he doesn't come back. Unless you count the Handsome Sorcerer in Dragon Keep or his upcoming appearance in Tales of the Borderlands to count.

Handsome Jack is an idiot.

One of the worst things you can have fighting against you is a Vault Hunter. They're impossible to kill and they can decimate the equivalent of a small country in a matter of hours. This raises the question, instead of attempting to kill the four er, five, actually six Vault Hunters, why didn't he just hire them? The answer is simple. He's an idiot.

Unlikely. If you pay attention to the opening sequence, Claptrap states "Great. Another dead Vault Hunter." Which implies that the playable characters and the main Crimson Raiders aren't the only Vault Hunters. Just the 6 in this game survive that train, the other ones are killed in the train crash. Jack also knew that by offering to hire the Vault Hunters that survived, it would make it easier for the 6 of them to kill him, because, as you said, the surviving 6 can "decimate the equivalent of a small country in a matter of hours.". The Vault Hunters aren't invincible, just tough to kill.

Handsome Jack also has a room out in the wastes where he dumps the Vault Hunters he kills, which is where Claptrap gets your first gun from. He also has a cyborg Dragon that (if not conveniently poisoned beforehand) can curb-stomp the original four Vault Hunters without taking a scratch, and he's legitimately one step ahead of you for a large part of the game. Arguably, he has a reason to be cocky.

Well think about it, they look similar to each other, even if their motives are slightly different. Handsome Jack would use Slag to speed up evolution to find the vault, but he would not want to use Slag to prove Darwin wrong. Also, they are both in pursuit of Artifacts(Jack the vault symbol, Willard the Four Polynesian Elements) and they both abuse their power to the extreme. Difference is, Jack doesn't turn into a mutant like Willard.

"Jack" is a nickname for "John," so it could be that Tassiter is perfectly aware of Jack's name, and is winding him up by being overly formal. One point in favor of this is in their first conversation in the Pre-Sequel - Tassiter initially addresses him as "Jack," only to pointedly switch to "John" at the end of their talk.

Alternatively, his given name really could be "Jack," and Tassiter is making a false assumption. (Real life example of this: my mom's given name is Peg - it's on her birth certificate and everything - but every now and then she encounters someone who insists on calling her "Margaret.")

Hyperion

Hyperion will be under new management in the next game, and the new president will be...

... Una Baha. Una sues and wins against Hyperion for her Uncle Teddy's Wave Gun patent, and though Hyperion is not finished, it IS under financial straits because of Handsome Jack's death and the lawsuit's payoff. Una then buys enough shares to become Hyperion's majority shareholder (and thus, the boss) and takes over. Hyperion becomes a much more humane company under her leadership (her first order of business would probably be to have Mr. Blake fragged, and possibly to start re-manufacturing Claptraps), and in appreciation for the Vault Hunters' part in helping her avenge her uncle, Una makes Hyperion the Vault Hunters' corporate sponsor.

T.K. Baha died in Borderlands (so before Borderlands 2): a sidequest involves stumbling on his hanged body.

TK shows up in the Zombie Island DLC of the first game as a friendly zombie. Considering that he's getting his own DLC, I guess Zombie TK is canon.

For those of you who couldn't read between the lines, Blake actually HELPED TK by warning him about the assassins when he had no other reason to do so. He is also one of the few antagonist quest givers who DOESN'T betray you at some point and actually pays you as promised when you complete his quest. He's actually probably the most reasonable man in Hyperion.

As of Tales Of The Borderlands, Hyperion has been destroyed due to the crash of Helios into Pandora, and only a friendly bandit group lead by Vaughn remains, named the Children of Helios.

Hyperion foot soldiers and field engineers are in some way artificially indoctrinated to ensure their loyalty.

It's damn near impossible to explain the fanatical loyalty of Hyperion's low ranks to Handsome Jack otherwise. Hyperion seems like exactly the sort of organization that would entice the low ranks with promises of food, wealth, stability, et cetera, and then thoroughly Mind Rape them into loyalty before letting them anywhere near a gun. This also partially explains why he has to threaten and coerce people like scientists and executives: if the brainwashing damages critical thinking skills, it can only be used on low-rank field personnel, making old-fashioned coercion necessary for anybody who is needed to do more than shoot things.

Or, given how easy it is to form a Cargo Cult on Pandora/in the clear absence of a loving god (but I repeat myself), it could be his satellite and other methods to set himself up as a powerful figure ruling from on high have just been very effective on a lot of the local population who form the bulk of his work force.

Considering that Professor Nakayama of the third DLC seems to be fanatically devoted to Jack out of his own free will, evidently there are just some folks who really like Jack.

Wilhelm is stated to be capable of defeating the Vault Hunters of the first game, with his weakened status in the second game being due to getting poisoned by Jack prior to the fight. Seeing as the DLCs make a point of introducing new Bonus Bosses each time, he'll return as Wilhelm the Invincible and be sufficiently difficult.

Jack intentionally let the Vault Hunters destroy Wilhelm because it amused him and it was totally worth it to destroy his almighty Dragon just to trick the Raiders. If he really cared that much about Wilhelm, he would have had him rebuilt before the end of the story, since nobody else cares about Wilhelm anyway.

More likely he'd only be brought back for the sake of having a raid boss with some flimsy justification as to why he's back.

He never actually did come back in the DLC, but we will get to play as him in the Pre-Sequel.

Blake will be involved in a future DLC

In the game, Blake is suggested to be working to undermine Jack by helping his enemies (TK Baha and Zed) and played a major role in the last DLC of the first game. Considering that the DLC seems to be following a similar pattern to the first game (fighting wacky outside elements, an arena-focused challenge) the fourth DLC might involve clearing up what Blake's actually up to.

With Jack and Angel both dead leadership of Hyperion will fall to vice-president Jeffrey Blake. Mr. Blake is not only shown as a generally reasonable, upright, honest individual, but he owes two of his biggest promotions to the actions of Vault Hunters and has a history of working successfully and fairly with them. He's also had plenty of time to see what 'being evil' and trying to betray people gets you since he's been around Pandora for so long. With him in charge of Hyperion, the company may encourage and act as 'mission control' for the next group of Vault Hunters while Blake attempts to rebuild Hyperion.

I see Blake as just wanting Hyperion to turn a profit. Jack's whole plan was wasteful of a lot of resources, and a lot of potential customers. Blake has realized it's best to maintain potential resources. Vault Hunters? Let them find the vault, then pay them for any technological finds inside. Much more efficiant, and doesn't waste any of Hyperion's own resources.

It is possible that Blake will be a questgiver in the next game, making occasional quips about "We at Hyperion are sorry for trying to conquer your planet and... Everything Handsome Jack did", with quests that may or may not involve blowing up what's left of Opportunity and Blake generally venting a lot of pent-up rage at his boss.

Tales from the Borderlands has Helios crashing into Pandora, wiping out most of the company's resources. The survivors have formed a friendly bandit clan named the Children of Helios, lead by Vaughn. However, at the time of the crash, Blake was revealed to be acting president of Hyperion.

Enemies/Bosses/Possibilities

The final boss of the game transforms or erupts from Pandora's moon.

The enemy poster shows parts of a ludicrously massive rock creature with lava veins which is likely to be the final boss of the game. The moon noticeably changes from the first game to be of the same appearance, not to mention that Handsome Jack's base is right next to it - and as we know, Jack is planning to unleash and control a creature from the second Vault. That vault just may be the moon.

The Vault isn't on the moon.

Nope, just like the first game it's on Pandora and is an extremely easy boss fight.

Just looking at how powerful Hyperius and Master Gee are after coming into contact with them, one can't help but wonder what kind of beings could do that to someone. Also, from the fact that Pyro Pete also drops Seraph Crystals would account for his huge boost in power, and raise further questions, one of which is, "Why are they empowering people like Pete, who wasn't that strong to begin with, as well as a random Hyperion engineer and pirate?"

Some further evidence to support this theory. A Seraph relic in Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt called "Breath of the Seraphs" has the red text: "Their return is to be feared..."

The war could be the Eridians fighting against the Seraphs, or the actual Seraphs themselves coming to invade.

The Warrior was sealed before the Eridians could complete it, why? I don't know but it's the only reason I can think of for a bio-superweapon having a massive weakspot for a chest.

The next game won't take place on Pandora

After blowing up the moon base, the Vault Hunters and Crimson Raiders will convert Sanctuary into a spaceworthy vessel, with which they can travel the galaxy kickin' ass and huntin' vaults. You'll be able to travel between planets, using the ship as a base of operations. The Vault Hunters, together with Marcus, Scooter, Tina and all the other supporting characters, will form your Badass Crew. Oh, and Claptrap will be there, too.

All surviving Vault Hunters will be playable characters in the next game.

Axton inherited Roland's action skill so that they could develop Roland as an NPC without sacrificing his gameplay niche. All the available Vault Hunters have unique skills, and every skill in the series' history can be brought forward into the next game.

While Jack had his charm until the endgame where he starts losing it, the next game will have someone that when they show up, all comedy goes out the window.

If there's a boss like Wilhelm who's feared by the previous generation of Vault Hunters, he'll be a That One Boss

With a good setup of skills and gear, Wilhelm can be easily dispatched. The next time a dreaded enforcer comes around, he'll be considered so feared that even a stoic badass like Zer 0 or a gung-ho wild man like Salvador would say "Run." It's when you have to fight him near the end of the game he gets to show why he's that dangerous, even on Normal, nevermind UVHM!

Sirens

There is one Siren per galaxy

Handsome Jack says very specifically that there are only six Sirens in the universe at any one time. Much later, Lilith makes an off-hand reference to "the Six Galaxies," in a "the known universe" kind of way. Maybe each galaxy gives birth to a single Siren. Who can then go to other galaxies if she feels like it, obviously.

The Vaults can only be opened by Sirens

It's not just that Sirens can charge the Vault Key - only they (or at least in their presence) can actually use the Key to open the Vaults. The first Vault was opened by Steele, who was almost certainly a Siren due to having the same tattoos as Lilith, Maya and Angel. The second, while technically the key was plugged in by Handsome Jack, had Lilith floating nearby and under his control. As a consequence, all those hundreds of Vaults revealed on other planets cannot be opened even if other, ready-to-use Vault Keys are found.

Angel/Fluttershy - Based on sheer woobieness. If you really stretch the facts, Phaseshift (which gives Angel total control over ANY electronics she's plugged into) can be compared to Fluttershy's Friend to All Living Things status.

Commandant Steele is currently out of consideration, seeing as: A) She's currently unconfirmed to be a Siren, and B) Wouldn't fit with any of the Mane Six. She's most likely an Element of Discord, and I'm not sure which one she would be if that's the case.

P.S. - Come to think of it, the grey hair and skin certainly give mind to the "Discorded" Elements. Still can't tell which one she is, since none of the Discorded Mane Six led an army in the name of a neo-FascistMega Corp..

All the Siren powers that we have seen so far (superpowered charge, telekinetic suspension, and computer control) are more-or-less biotic powers that exist in Mass Effect, and Eridium, which is clearly Element Zero, supercharges their powers. Clearly humanity in this setting is from a different cycle that the original Mass Effect series, and people with biotics who know how to use them are much rarer, leading to the belief that there are only ever six (since there is an average of one "siren" biotic every galaxy, and people like nice round numbers).

Whatever ones definition of "popping into existence" is, six galaxies are referenced. Given this, there's reason to believe there's people screwing around and babies being born constantly, and when one siren ceases to exist for good, another one gets the powers. As for Steele in the robot revolution DLC, she was without her powers but since she's trained in martial arts and enhanced by the claptraps, she was still able to put up a good fight.

There used to be Male Sirens long ago but they were wiped out. Now, the only way they can exist is artificially.

Artifical Male Sirens are more like empowered humans rather than true Sirens, but hold very similar if very watered down versions of Siren abilities and less defined Eridian markings on their skin. They are created through a combination of blood transfusion, organ transplants and refined Eridium. Unlike their female counterparts, male sirens have issues controlling their powers correctly and are often intoxicated by them which leads to abusing their powers. This in turn makes them difficult to control which is why the Eridians wiped out the natural born males long ago.

They seem to have a lot in common, both love to put people in death traps...and both of them are batshit insane.

Tiny Tina is a eridium survivor.

In the cutscene where you meet Dr Zed, You JUST might notice the surgery guy getting injected said. "I'm starving, I want to eat ur babies!!" And also, Tina has mentioned eating/burning babys a number of times*, It also explains her huge eyes and her being... Well, you know.

Love of Tea Parties and killing people; perfect. The Pandoran slang was uncouth though, and it took a couple of centuries to deprogram that.

Tiny Tina eventually gets adopted by Mr. Torgue.

Similar to the above. Mr. Torgue's entire personality is based around explosions, so is his company, and Tiny Tina is basically Pandora's resident expert demolitionist, capable of manufacturing massive landmines and missiles despite her young age. She seems like the daughter Torgue (probably) never had.
And they do seem to be on rather friendly terms and know each other after the Arena DLC and the trailer for Tina's DLC shows him calling her personally demanding to be in her story, so there is some familiarity already in place.

Or at the very least he would hire her to work for Torgue, she would surely make great grenades and launchers.

Tiny Tina adopted her speech mannerisms from Roland.

Tina's gangster speak is similar to Roland's from the first game (albeit greatly exaggerated), and it's suggested in Dragon Keep that she speaks that way because she thinks it's cool (she makes Roland speak the same way, and Lilith quickly points out that Roland doesn't speak that way). Perhaps when she first met Roland, he was still cocky and fun-loving, and she eventually started talking like him due to how much she adored him. As Roland matured and became more serious like in the second game, Tina kept talking that way.

If enough time passes between Borderlands(or rather The Pre Sequel) and Borderlands 3, then Tiny Tina will be old enough to be a vault hunter and thus playable.

Given her allegiances to the Vault Hunters this would not be surprising, her skill trees would revolve around explosions. Her Action Skill would be "Sir Bartleby's Angry Metal Progeny" which digistructions a swarm of suicide-bombing robot insects.

Other Characters

When Patricia Tannis thought her ECHO recorder was talking to her, it was really Angel using the ECHO recorder to talk with her

In the first set of recording you have found Angel needed to know how much Tannis knew about the Vault to know how to manipulate the first wave of Vault hunters, and where better to get that information than the source. The only reason Angel was not on the ECHO recordings was because she edited herself off the them.

Given that Tannis is confirmed to have Aspergers Syndrome, it is entirely possible that she simply didn't quite directly connect her ECHO recorder talking to her as a person on the other end hacking into it.

When Tannis has her second major crazy period, it's talking with someone you don't see to get the ECHO network back online. Angel could have been using the loudspeaker to speak, and besides Angel was the other person with the technical know-how and motivation to get the ECHO network back online. Tannis' instructions on how to turn the ECHO network back on are described as "an argument with either an invisible cell mate or a rat" and it would make sense that the argument with Angel who couldn't hear Tannis, but could look at Tannis' notes through the security cameras in the base where Tannis is being kept.

Also, Angel probably wanted to talk to someone who is definitely outside of Handsome Jack's control, and by making people think that Tannis is crazy, she was able to make sure that Handsome Jack didn't both to spy on her

This also explains at least part of the "Ceiling Chairs" ECHO logs from Tannis: Angel talking to via a speaker in one of the chairs when Tannis' torturers weren't around, and Tannis, because of her Ambiguous Disorder (confirmed to be Aspergers) thought that it was the chair itself talking to her.

Claptrap's confirmed as the last of his kind... and it's the original Vault Hunters' fault.

Not really jossed, since it was under Hyperion orders that the Vault Hunters took on the Claptraps, so even if the Vault Hunters were the weapon that wiped them out, it was Hyperion pulling the trigger.

More than likely while the Vault Hunters were the weapon that stopped the Robolution, it is Jack who specifially ordered the annihilation of all remaining Claptraps in order to prevent another Robolution from happening again. Of course, since it was the Valt Hunters' excessive looting that caused CT's ninja switch to be activated in the first place, technically they are responsible for the eradication of the product line.

Actually, Claptrap specifically mentions that Handsome Jack ordered the end of the production of his model line. This means that the Vault Hunters are NOT responsible for ending the line. Critically thinning out the numbers, perhaps, but Jack was responsible for ordering Hyperion to halt the production of new units.... and then ordered his troops to kill off the remainders.

This might be revealed in the Pre-Sequel, as Claptrap is apparently one of Jack's Servants. It seems weird that Claptrap would hold this as a grudge if it happened while he was still loyal to Jack.

Michael identifies himself as a Vault Hunter, which in Borderlands is kinda a big deal, yet noone around town will so much as mention him. He appears in the oddest of areas, such as Crimson Raider HQ (which only people with keys should be able to even get inside, and neither Roland nor Tannis mention or acknowledge him). One of his lines is a heart-wrenchingly delivered "I don't need this anymore". And he stops appearing after Sanctuary takes off, i.e. when you really come into your own as a Vault Hunter and don't need his help anymore.

He still appears after Sanctuary moves; his (intended) spawn rate is low enough that many people simply believe he stops appearing entirely because they haven't seen him yet.

It kind of explains itself really. Mr. Tourge comes from a proud lineage of arms dealing, explosions, and exquisite mustaches.

TK Baha is Dr. Zed's forbidden brother.

In TK Baha's Bloody Harvest, TK mentions that Dr. Zed has a "forbidden" brother in addition to Dr. Ned named "Dr. Ted". Guess who conveniently happens to be named Ted? TK himself.

Weapons Manufacturers

The next game will feature Corporate Sponsorship.

After you choose your character, you can actually choose a company as a sponsor. Any goods from said company cost less for you and sell higher, but the company will have a direct competitor whose goods now cost you more and sell for less. This can also be a cool way to include optional quests for your sponsor against their competition (replay value, you're welcome, Gearbox!).

Alternatively, Torgue Corp. is operated by Orkz. Checkerboard patterns, red and yellow paint schemes, big and clunky and all the ammo they shoot explodes.

Tediore used standardised parts from grenades, at least initially.

Since grenade mods seem to modify grenades without being consumed, it's fair to assume that they're digistructed in a similar way. Since grenades are inherently disposable it makes sense that they'd have cheap parts (there's no point in designing a homing mechanism which will be able to survive 1,000,000 flights when it's going to be blown to pieces on its first, after all). Tediore might have experimented with using the cheap grenade parts in guns (with or without the intention of making the invocation of Throw-Away Guns a feature), found that they still detonated (maybe it would have been too expensive to modify them not to, maybe it was just an accident) and made it a feature.

Torgue's bio actually hints that he will be Moxxi's 4th husband

Mr. Torgue's planet of origin is Hephaestus, keeping up with Borderlands tradition of naming important planets, characters or plot elements after the Greek pantheon( we already have Atlas Corp., Hyperion, Athena, Promethea and Pandora itself). Hephaestus was the Greek god of crafts, the forge and volcanoes (and thus, explosions), which is pretty much a perfect description of Torgue: craftsman and explosion-obssessed. Now, in Greek mythology, Hephaestus was husband to the pantheon's most beautiful goddess, Aphrodite. In-universe, the most beautiful woman is Moxxi, and it's been mentioned since the first game that Moxxi is basically always looking for a husband when she's single. At the end of the DLC, Moxxi mentions that she sees her partnership with Torgue to run the arena as the start of a beautiful partnership, thus we can assume that she's eyeing him to be Husband #4.

Moxxi went through two more husbands before the events of Borderlands 2: Mordecai (#4) and Handsome Jack (#5). Reining in Torgue to be #6? Quite possible.

They weren't husbands. They were just boyfriends/flings.

No, Mordecai specifically mentions winning the prize from the Underdrome Tournament, which was Moxxi's hand in marriage. Jack was likely just a fling, however.

Lawful Good: Tediore. Their weapons are cheap, disposable, and user-friendly, which makes them ideal for home defense and personal protection, and that's exactly how they name and market them. Tediore aims to make sure everyone who wants to protect themselves and their families is able to regardless of budget and their unique weapons and shields from the first game emphasized defense and endurance over raw damage.

Neutral Good: Anshin and Pangolin. Manufacturers of medical supplies, healing hypos, and the best shields in the galaxy, these two corporations both strive to defend and protect. They're not really discriminatory as to who they protect, they want to help everyone. Anshin is a bit more militant than Pangolin, due to their manufacture of transfusion grenades.

Chaotic Good: Vladof. Always in it for the 'working man' and very gung-ho pro-Revolution but too wrapped up in their own dogma to ever succeed at anything. They're hypocritical on some things but do seem to have the best interests of the masses at heart. Not much has been seen from Vladof yet, though, so this one's debatable.

Lawful Neutral: Jakobs. Jakobs isn't actively malevolent towards their employees so much as completely disinterested. They live and die by their contractual word, but have no ethical problems with roping people into contracts they can't avoid and won't aim to save anyone of its outside their contract. This also gives them a good reason to use the 'Western sheriff' vibe all their weapons seem to favor.

True Neutral: Maliwan. A company that epitomizes For Science! in the Borderlands universe, they don't take any real sides in any conflict, they just push out high-tech, stylish firearms that kill people in horrible ways while discovering more ways to do the same.

Chaotic Neutral: Torgue. Obsessed with cool explosions and Stuff Blowing Up despite causing rampant destruction to their own best interests in the process. Just as much a danger to themselves as to anyone else, just like a careless user of one of their guns.

Lawful Evil: Hyperion. Believes they're bringing peace and order, but their laws are draconian, their punishments excessively severe, and they brutally oppress everyone they can exercise authority over. Additionally, their guns have very dry, corporate-sounding names to emphasize just how sterilized the Hyperion environment has become.

Neutral Evil: Dahl. Shown to be very profit-focused and ruthlessly corporate, willing to abandon thousands of people on a Death World or slaughter an entire species of peaceful wildlife if it suits their goals.

Chaotic Evil: Atlas in the first game, Bandit in the second. They act seemingly randomly, have extremely poor organizational structures if any, and kick more dogs than is strictly necessary. Loyal, competent people like Knoxx or Roland either get thrown to the grinder or flee.

That... Most of that actually makes sense...

Where does S&S Munitions fit?

S&S went out of business between Borderlands 1 and 2 and was never really fleshed out, but would have likely been True Neutral with Maliwan since both share similar views of technology and S&S didn't seem to have any ethical leaning one way or another.

THE PRESUMED WEAPON MANUFACTURERS FOR EACH CLASS

Axton: Either Dahl(Because of the army-looking camos.) or Jakobs (Because Axton looks like the kind of guy to uses 19TH-20TH century weapons) or Torugue or Tediore

Dahl seems most likely here since Axton used to work for Dahl.

I used to work for Apple, doesn't mean I own any of their gadgets. I play Axton with Vladof gear for the sheer DPS their guns provide, coupled with Metal Storm. Commando is all about suppressive fire, which Vladof provides in spades.

Zero: Either Vladof (It has camos that pretty much match him, See above.) or Hyperion (Considering his suit is made by Hyperion.

Maya: Maliwan

Salvador: Torgue

Krieg: Bandit, What did you expect?

Gaige: Tediore (Because it looks like one of those Build-A-Gun things)

Actually, Zer 0 might lean towards Jakobs and Hyperion since high-damage single-shot weapons are more his thing (and his Legendary Class Mod is a Jakobs). Salvador might lean towards Vladof and Bandit weaponry. Krieg would be Bandit and Torgue and Gaige might be Tediore and Hyperion.

Gaige's choice of manufacturer depends heavily on what build she's going. Anarchy!Gaige would definitely prefer Hyperion or Tediore, or Jakobs weaponry, while a Little Big Trouble!Gaige would go with Maliwan.

On the subject of which manufacturer the Vault Hunters prefer:

Axton: Vladof. Their assault rifles provide excellent covering fire and in his character image◊, he wields a Spinigun.

Salvador: Torgue. They make what is often thought to be the best weapon for him to Gunzerk with, the Unkempt Harold. Their pistols are also pretty damn good-and pistols are part of some of Salvador's class mods.

Zer 0: Jakobs. They make some of the most reliable and highest-damaging sniper rifles in the game, and powerful, semi-automatic, precise weapons would appeal to him, despite the old-fashioned Wild West tech.

Gaige: Jakobs or Bandit. Although Jakobs shotguns are required for anyone playing Anarchy, Bandit makes some of the best shotguns in the game, with the huge magazine size coming in handy and having a 15 to 20% critical damage bonus over other manufacturers. (This is why Bandits use shotguns 99% of the time.)

Krieg: Torgue. It's already been mentioned on the Game Breaker page that Torgue shotguns turn him into an extremely OP raging bloodthirsty warrior, and they have a tendency to turn enemies into bloody puddles of body parts, which Krieg loves. (Just look at his quotes!)

I'd have to disagree, here's a different View.

Lawful Good: Jakobs is the only group to outright back the Vault hunter against Jack, has strong family values, and most Jakobs gear tend towards "Peace and order" Imagery.

The "strong family values" thing is highly questionable. It is declared in an advertisement and their actual policies regarding their employees (see Jacobstown) go pretty much in the exact opposite direction.

Chaotic Good: Torgue, they make weapons designed to be Awesome, unashamedly promote the Vault hunter, both Mr. Torgue and Anton Smith are decent men.

Lawful Neutral: Dahl seems more focused on profit, with outright Evil types like Harchek are less common than Tannis or Booth. Overall the company focuses on Profit, without the level of manipulative greed of Vladof, power-hungry nature of Hyperion or the sheer insanity of Atlas and Bandit.

True Neutral: Tediore, makes cheap pieces of crap en masse to sell to the masses, with little to no oversight or attempt to keep their customers safe, hence their guns explode when reloaded. Tediore isn't as orderly as Dahl and it's highly efficent weapons and company actions, but lack Maliwan's showboating insanity.

Chaotic Neutral: Maliwan, Like Dahl and Tediore, Maliwan objective #1 is make a shiny penny, however they have the least inhibitions over using extremely painful elemental torture to do so, build weapons that are haphazardly designed with a clear form over function philosophy, and a slight degree of comedic sociopathy in claiming setting people on fire is better than a clean death.

Neutral Evil: Vladof, Violent, hypocritical, selfish, and with items that milk the player for money such as grenades that look great on paper but don't work against moving targets, ammo dumping weapons, and shields that make you want to get shot, leading to inviteable purchase of hp boosters at Dr. Zeds or a New-u. They're also slightly hinting towards having School/Workplace mass murderers as a target Audience given their Sales Pitch.

Another of the weapons producing Mega Corp. is going to be the Big Bad of the third game.

In the previous game, Atlas Company was the main Big Bad, becoming a major presence near the end of the game and going out of business thanks to the Vault Hunters by its end. In the sequel, Hyperion is the Big Bad, with its main CEO, Handsome Jack, having ambitions of drilling into Pandora to snag an even bigger vault than the one the Final Boss came out of from the first game. Whether or not merely Handsome Jack is defeated at the end or Hyperion goes kaputz like Atlas did, Hyperion itself would not be a major player in third game. Instead, there are six other weapons manufacturers left to antagonize the third generation of Vault Hunters. Here are the most likely:

Dahl, coming back to reap the rewards off Pandora due to the riches found, believing they would've hit pay dirt if they hadn't bailed out in their first attempt.

Dahl definitely seems likely. They not only dropped the ball on the Vault once, which must sit badly with them, but they also already have a huge amount of mining assets not only on Pandora, but other planets as well. If the next game's in Pandora too, they can reclaim their assets there and quickly make a play to take over. Also, they'd be pretty pissed at the Crimson Raiders, considering that Sanctuary itself is technically Dahl property.

Dahl has already been established to be thoroughly amoral. They most defintely seem to be the front-runner choice, considering what we know about Atlas and Hyperion.

Jakobs, led by a group of shadowy individuals who all claim to be the descendants of the company's founder.

Jakobs already was this in the Zombie DLC for the first game.

Vladof, with the company taking its own sales pitch WAY too seriously and is using Pandora as the main hub for ANY anti-revolutionary group in the galaxy, making the planet even MORE lawless and chaotic than before in stark contrast to Hyperion forcefully trying to instill order.

On the other hand, they haven't done anything as bad as Atlas, Hyperion, Dahl or Jakobs have......that we know off.

Vladof isn't really an instigator company. They support "the oppressed", even offering the Crimson Raiders a sponsorship deal if they only used Vladof weapons. Roland mentioned it got kinda awkward when they declined.

Maliwan and Torgue, both of them trying to claim Pandora for different reasons and clashing in open warfare against each other with their differing styles becoming the most prevalent of the clash. Possibly a chance to parody the Excuse Plot of Team Fortress 2 and maybe a satirical exaggeration of modern day corporate rivals (McDonald's vs. Burger King, Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi, Target vs. Walmart, etc.)

Torgue already got a DLC and is decidedly non-evil (simply kinda dumb and way too focused on awesomeness to the detriment of everything else).

Alternatively, Torgue alone - In Borderlands 1, Atlas was the villain, Hyperion starred in a DLC, and Torgue was highlighted in a lengthy side-quest. In Borderlands 2, Hyperion was the villain, Torgue starred in a DLC, and Dahl was highlighted in a lengthy side-quest. In Borderlands 3, following this trend, Torgue will be the main villain, Dahl will star in a DLC, and another company will feature prominently in a side-quest. As for Mr. Torgue, he's already shown to have little to no interaction with the rest of his corporation and has minimal control over it outside of things he's personally involved with, so it's entirely possible they'll kick him out.

While Mister Torgue is definitely not evil, he doesn't actually control his own company. He's just a figurehead. The Wattle Gobbler DLC shows that the actual president of Torgue is amoral at best and totally evil at worst, considering the fights against the Wattle Gobbler were rigged so that only Mister Torgue could defeat it, hence improving the company's image. Also, the president is willing to murder anybody who risks foiling the plot, including the Vault Hunter.

What if Torgue was actually a front for an Angry Marine Scout Sergeant, sent to Pandora to scour for the next batch of initiates for the Chapter? Certainly would explain his attitude and his desire to swear at everything.

It seems very likely that it will be the Torgue Corporation, as in the Campaign of Carnage Torgue was indeed the president and owner of the company, but due to the disaster that followed, Torgue was tricked into selling it all away. Now that Anton's plan has been ruined, he directly threatened to kill Torgue and the Vault Hunters for the Waddle Gobbler incident. It wouldn't be a stretch to think of the 3rd game as helping Mister Torgue survive and destroy his old company.

Alternatively, Maliwan, with their focus on elemental tech, may try to kidnap Lilith and Maya to experiment on them.

Also alternatively, Corraza, the Dummied Out manufacturer from the first game. They may have a new gimmick such as shield-sapping grenades, the reason they got Dummied Out in the first place, or reuse Hyperion/Atlas style (High accuracy/High balanced stats).

Tediore most likely wouldn't, due to a company focused on cheap yet reliable merchandise becoming evil corporate overlords would be impractical in-universe, and extremely cliche gameplay and storywise, while the Bandits not being likely shouldbeobvious.

ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT! I'll add an addendum... Ahem. Your goal won't be to DESTROY the mega-corps, but to take out their CEOs (or protect CEOs that are decent enough, like Mr. Torgue), and replace them with more reasonable members of their staff - while denying the wealth and/or superweapons in the other Vaults.

Their guns are already semi-autos. They just don't keep firing when you hold down the trigger.

Fires every time you pull the trigger =/= Semi-auto. A semi auto puts a fresh round into the chamber using the recoil from each shot and re-cocks the firing mechanism. All of the Jakobs weapons I've seen are revolvers, of which maybe 3 models have ever had "automatic" functions.

New-U Stations

The New-U Network is turned off if Hyperion has a bounty on you

This is why there seem to be an unlimited number of bandits. They're respawning at their own terminals, and Hyperion is making money off them every time they die. Not to mention hiring them out for merc work. Also why the former Vault Hunters are staying mostly on the sidelines; they've been locked out of the system, but the Guardian Angel hacked you in. And keeping you alive for a while was a large part of Jack's plan.

Well, considering that Jack's hacker is Angel, it could be that he just doesn't have anyone who can undo what she did. So the above might be evidence against it, but I wouldn't call it fully jossed. And the answer to why he didn't just shut the entire system down is easy: They're making too much money off the respawning bandits, not to mention their own people, to do that. We don't know exactly how Hyperion works as a company, but the CEO usually isn't an absolute dictator. Presumably the board of directors or equivalent wouldn't let him turn off one of their greatest sources of income over a grudge.

A sidequest at the end of the game reveals some of Jack's past, including a conversation he had with the former President of Hyperion. The President mentions that Jack scared the other shareholders out of their shares, so presumably there is no board of directors, Jack owns the entire company.

Cut material (possibly) has revealed that initially it was Jack's plan, then Angel's doing and then Jack wanting to kill you himself.

The New-U stations specifically mention that they'll continue to create new clones for you so long as you have the money to do so. It doesn't matter what Handsome Jack or Angel wants or does. It's a simple business tactic: So long as you die, Hyperion keeps making money. Its not much different than Marcus selling guns to two different bandit clans who were trying to kill each other. This is also the reason why you-know-who didn't respawn. Didn't bother to pay up Hyperion for the service.

Except it's not. When Marcus sells the guns to the bandit clans trying to kill each other, he's not trying to kill *him* right then and there, and causing huge profit damages. The Vault Hunters absolutely are to Hyperion, and any profit they get from the Vault Hunter's respawning is more than counterbalanced by the huge amount of damage (s)he/they do to the company. Couple that with the fact that New-U *will* respawn you if you're broke, and any semblance of sanity this "simple business tactic" has is absolutely thrown out the window.

New-U Stations aren't actually reviving people; they're just built on top of respawn points that are natural to Pandora. This is why unique animals respawn as well. Hyperion did, however, find a way to toll a percentage of money from respawners anyways.

One of the quotes the machine states says that the bodies they make you are digistructs (it basically asks you not to think too much about the fact you've been a digital copy of yourself since the first time you died).

After a few years, one builds a resistance to New-U Stations, and when you die, it's for good.

Or you just cancel your contract with Hyperion and stop paying them for the service... So long as they make money, it doesn't matter who you are.

Corporate magnates are legally restricted from using New-U stations

This whole society is going to be in deep shit if CorruptCorporateExecutives can stay in power for eternity. There are probably laws that, if nothing else, prevent New-U clones from maintaining assets they held in life. This way, even if Jack kept a backup body around (and why wouldn't he?) the next Jack will not be a significant threat (though I imagine the level heads at Hyperion would remove him from the network either way because they're not idiots).

Updates/DLC

One of the upcoming DLCs will focus on the Atlas Corporation's fall.

Not only is the fall of one of the setting's biggest business conglomerates a plot point worth exploring, it can also lead to Gearbox putting back Atlas weapons as super rare vintage weaponry. It's a great way to bring back Athena, too. And of course, General Knoxx clearly hasn't suffered enough yet.

One of the upcoming DLCs will focus on S&S.

While Atlas's absence in this game makes sense on account of the events of the first game, S&S is curiously absent as a manufacturer with no explanation whatsoever. My guess is that S&S will come back with a vengeance in one of the DLCs.

The latest news seems to indicate that Torgue will be the focus of the second DLC. S&S might come up, since they were the "rival" to Torgue (being the More Dakka to Torgue's BFG).

The official strategy guide confirms that S&S went bankrupt and disbanded over the 5 years between games.

Word of God has said that, in terms of gameplay, S&S prided itself on having huge magazine clips. Since they made all the different gun companies each hold their own unique property, there was no point in having S&S anymore since Bandit weaponcrafters took up the role instead (and the jury-rigged glue and duct tape gun designs made them more memorable.) * Interestingly, Tales from the Borderlands has both the destruction of Hyperion and the return of Atlas thanks to Rhys, who is the new President of Atlas.

The last DLC will be on Jack's Space Station, and involve the New-U Respawn Stations

Jack's "locked up" Roland's New-U account, but he also has Angel's saved. (And of course, he has a deluxe one himself.) Maybe you'll even enter into the New-U systems and encounter all the old characters plus Jack, and find a way to make them Deader Than Dead.

Possible, they did say that the station could appear in a future DLC.

Partially confirmed; The B&B game the final DLC was based around turns out to have been the old Vault hunters and Tiny Tina killing time while the new hunters get a Hyperion informant to cough up the codes to the Station (although we don't get to see any of it beyond Maya coming in and revealing it), thus ending on a fairly apparent Sequel Hook.

Because awesomeness. Also, it wouldn't be the first time enemy vehicles became accessible to players (Monster and APCs were enemy exclusive in the first game, but became player-accessible in the General Knoxx DLC, as well as the Bandit Technicals in this game).

Captain Scarlett will return in the final DLC

Evidently, she was originally going to be killed in her DLC, but it seems the developers might have other plans for her. She returns as part of the likely Boss Rush for the sake of completing her backstabbing. It's the principle of the thing for her, after all.

Highly unlikely, since the final DLC will be centered around a fight with Crawmerax Jr. and the only non-player characters that have been confirmed to appear in person are Mordecai, Hammerlock and Crazy Earl.

She has been confirmed to be alive and well as of The Horrible Hunger of the Ravenous Wattle Gobbler though, since Grandma Flexington mentioned meeting her in one of her stories.

Well, she's neither mentioned nor appears in the Son of Crawmerax DLC. Guess we'll have to wait and see what happens to her.

Remember how Claptrap's Robot Revolution "revived" the villains of both the main game and the other DLCs? There could be a DLC where the enemies are Silicon-Based Life (whom the Crystalisks are part of). Their interaction with humans has left them bitter, and they use Eridium (or some other crystal) to assimilate or revive lifeforms. And guess what- they're "revived" Bloodwing, Roland, Angel, Helena Pierce and Handsome Jack, and you're forced to put all of them down!

It could also introduce a new player character class- one of those crystal lifeforms who believes that humans aren't bastards and fights against his own race because of this.

The next DLC, instead of wrapping up the story, will instead focus on providing better endgame content.

Because Gearbox seems interested in going beyond the first season pass, things like the Eridians and the moon base may be held off for a future installment. Instead, the "Bunkers and Badasses"-themed expansion will provide a loose story about an underground Hyperion outpost in order to justify things like horde modes, single-character challenges, gameplay modifications like in Moxxi's Underdome, and other variations on the Borderlands formula. This will cause some amount of Broken Base, but will provide more Gearbox-approved ways of acquiring legendaries and pearlescents.

Mostly confirmed as far as Raid On Digistruct Peak goes: it's all guns, no story.

Yeah, definitely confirmed. It has guns, class mods, and the overpower system to make equipment and enemies more powerful. During the Digistruct Peak missions, however, Tannis does share some interesting information on the various enemies of the game.

The Fourth DLC was a joint promotional stunt by Maliwan and Torgue.

Most of the special weapons that can be found in Tiny Tina's Assault On Dragon Keep are either Maliwan or Torgue (Spell Grenades, The Crit, The Swordsplosion and The Ogre). This isn't implying the game never happened, it just implies that literally everything is either a digistructed prop or actually there in the case of Butt Stallion. Maybe Mister Torgue was so inspired by the game that he called up a representative at Maliwan to help make it real.

The 'Vault' in Torgue's DLC was opened previously.

Either Jack or Torgue made up the part about the "Blood of the biggest coward" bit to promote the tournament, when it was opened before by he two of them. The contents? A giant eridian shark wearing a bolo-tie. Torgue killed, filled the vault with loot and explosives and Boom! Torgues tournament is open for business.

The Vault in the Badass Crater of Badassitude was a fake. Mr. Torgue arranged the entire Campaign of Carnage just to take down Piston

Mr. Torgue may be a explosion-obsessed lunatic, but he's has shown himself to be very clever when he needs to be. He designed all his weapons himself, he's organised big events seemingly all by himself, and he figured out how to beat the supposed invincible Wattle-Gobbler. Despite suffering from an extreme case of Testosterone Poisoning, he is still an heroic character who loves children and his grandma. So it stands to reason that he would loathe Piston, an arrogant bully who only ever won anything by cheating.

Torgue could have just fired his biggest explosive into Piston's face and called it a day, but he didn't just want him dead, he wanted everyone to see how pathetic Piston really was. The problem is, no-one is badass enough to best Piston's dirty tricks.

Except the Vault Hunters, of course.

So he creates a fake vault in the Badass Crater to lure the Vault Hunters, and a tournament to lure Piston. He makes the Vault Hunters jump through a lot of hoops because he wants it done by the book: The Vault Hunters need to earn their place on the leaderboard for it to mean anything.

The Vault Hunters easily outclass Piston, who resorts to ever more desperate measures to win. In their final confrontation the audience finally sees Piston for what he is and boo him, before the Vault Hunters hand him his ass.

I can hear you groaning, but hear this WMG out. Take a look at the Gunzerker's skill tree. While "No Kill Like Overkill" at the bottom of the "Gunlust" tree could just be a coincidence (it's a pretty common phrase and all of the trees are brimming with Shout Outs), on the opposite side, the capitalisation and lack of a dash on the first two words in the description of the final skill of the "Brawn" tree suggests some influence on the formatting, even if it wasn't a direct referencenote A Google search indicates that its original source, The Tick, phrases it as "nigh-invunerable", implying that TV Tropes influenced the phrasing, even if it was intended as a shout out to the source.: "Nigh-Invulnerability is one hell of a drug.".

There are also a number of other references, such as Sir Hammerlock namedropping Gentleman Adventurer and using words like "expositing." Not exclusive to TV Tropes by any means, but still, it makes you wonder.

Hardly WMG material. Headwriter for Borderlands 2 and Gearbox employee Anthony Burch has referenced TV Tropes in the past, in one of his podcasts. He is aware.

Innuendobot makes it clear that he hates being programmed to constantly make terrible sex-related puns, and after suffering for so long that way, when he finally manages to get that programming removed, he becomes a super strict Moral Guardian out of revenge, and is bent on eradicating all lewdness from Pandora. C3n50r 807 also lapses into innuendo at times, perhaps out of habit, or perhaps because the programming wasn't totally deleted.

Nope. He's the preacher for the wedding in the Wedding Day Massacre DLC and by the end he's dead.

The currency used in Pandora is called Pandollar.

Somebody have to say that. -__-

The title song for the next Borderlands game will be by...

Cold War Kids, another indie band with a similar sound to Cage The Elephant and The Heavy with songs that deal with moral identity as the previous games songs have. The only problem is that Cold War Kids tends to lean into Catholic imagery and lower to middle class life in the Greater Los Angeles Area but there's probably something.

Explosions are related to the letter "T"

Lets take a list here, Explosive firing guns are made by the Torque manufacturer, which was founded by Mr. Torque, and the only non-Too Awesome Touse rocket weapon (which they make) is the Torpedo, at the same time, the guns made by Tediore expplode when Thrown and Roland sends you to Tiny Tina to hijack a Train using explosives.

The name is not a merely a matter of Name's the Same, but a twisted continuation of the first story. Eridium is actually an alloy of some sort with unobtanium (or hell simply a much cooler name for the same thing). After kicking all of the human’s off-planet, the Na’vii enjoyed a peaceful rebuilding of their society, with their new-found allies…for a few years.

Then the humans returned with bigger guns, larger mechas and nuclear warheads, having decided that peaceful co-habitation was completely impossible. After nuking the planet into a nuclear winter, massacring all survivors, and then aggressively strip mined, the place was left as a desolate wasteland that was inhabited by a handful of radioactively warped creatures that had gone insane and driven on by a lunatic Ah-wai. This is why Pandora is so deadly to humans: revenge on anything who dares step foot on this planet.

The Eridians found Pandora as the perfect hiding place: an isolated, self-protecting vault that would hide their secrets indefinitely…until hundreds of years later an eager Dahl researcher rediscovered the notes of the planet Pandora and somehow connected it with the legend of the Vault. After managing to convince some higher-ups at a board meeting, the result are the Borderlands we know and fear.

Borderlands 3 will feature Gear crafting

Due to no longer having any responsibilities to the Torgue company and his friendship with the Vault Hunters, Mr. Torgue will use his genius weapons crafting abilities to help customize the Vault Hunter gear. Mr. Torgue himself will only deal with explosive gear, obviously, but he will have a number of capable apprentices who serve the other types of gear. Or barring that, using the Corporate sponsorship idea above, representatives of each corporation(with Mr. Torgue serving as the Torgue representative). Or barrring ALL of this, he will join the Vault Hunter as a playable character.

The Eridians are still around.

Eridians are still fucking here. They exist. They live. They saw what happened on Pandora. And they are NOT fucking happy. The Eridium was a cache, meant for emergencies. The Destroyer, a guardian. See, the Warrior was a fallback plan, in case shit went down and humanity found the true Eridian homeworld. With the Eridium used up, and the Warrior being woken early, something HAD to be done.

He's either Eridian, or a robot constructed by them. He was sent to kill Jack and stop this bullshit. The Eridians had a VERY vested interest in keeping the Warrior asleep.

But that went to shit, which leads me to my thoughts for DLC and sequels.

DLC is going to hint at Eridian involvement more and more. We're gonna be seeing a lot more E-tech, a lot more ruins, maybe even hear their legends and history. The Cult of the Vault will be explored more.

And in the sequel, all hell breaks loose as the alien fuckers invade.

The Races/Classes of Dragon Keep

While this is all obvious, throwing it out there.

Axton is a Human Ranger
Salvador is a Dwarf Monk
Maya is an Elf Cleric
Krieg is a pale-skinned Half Orc or Human Barbarian
Gaige is a Human Necromancer Wizard
Zer 0 is a... Ghoul? Ghost? Rogue (if 3.0) or Great Old One Warlock/Rogue hybrid (If 4.0 or 5.0) Maybe an Antipaladin or Blackguard.

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